What is the best way to start making money online with affiliate marketing?

My answer to this question is YES. You can make money doing affiliate marketing online BUT it requires a lot of hard work and time. However, it has more benefits over the brick-and-mortar business.

You see, with the traditional e-commerce business, you have to deal with most of the same headaches that any brick-and-mortar business would have to deal with on a daily basis. These include customer complaints, shipping and handling products, problems with credit card processing companies, making refunds, and having to keep some sort of inventory in your home or business. In addition, you have to make sure that you have a professional website with appropriate shopping cart software and security features to minimize the threat of hackers.

With affiliate marketing, on the other hand, you don't have to worry about all of these headaches. Instead, you simply refer people to a company's website and make commissions from sales. It's a much easier way to make money through affiliate marketing as it generates income in autopilot mode.

So what exactly does it take to make money as an affiliate?

Task #1: Understand the Make Money Process

There are more than three billion internet users (the audience) and these people are looking (searching) for things all the time. They are looking for information and to buy products. That is where you are going to come in with your website and help these "audiences" by offering them information about what they are looking. You will be helping these people and earning revenue in the process.

Task #2: Finding Your Niche

Your online business should not feel like a day job. Earning money online should be fun, and it is fun. This all starts with choosing a niche that you are interested in and will enjoy working with. The more you enjoy doing something the less it feels like a job and the more productive you are going to be.

TIPS: Check out the Hot and Trending Niches for 2017 – Profitable Ideas for Affiliate Marketing

Your niche could be anything, but at the core of your niche selection it should be something that you "like". Something you enjoy. Something you can talk about. Something you want to learn about.

In the simplest form, a niche is really a group of people looking for stuff. When you select your niche, you want to avoid being too broad with your niche selection. What people fail to understand is the fact that there are millions of people looking for stuff online within what seems to be the smallest of niches, but they really are not.

A few things that you should understand about niches are:

(1) You are going to be writing content within your niche
(2) You are going to be communicating within your niche
(3) You are going to be choosing products to promote within your niche
(4) You need to enjoy helping people within you niche.
(5) Your first niche PROBABLY won't be your last (so don't worry about it being perfect)
(6) Any niche can become a "full time" successful business

Task #3: Build Your Website

Having your own domain name is ideal and gives you a huge competitive advantage when it comes to succeeding online. For example, if you owned your own domain it would look something like this...

yourwebsite (dot) com

For example, if your niche was "Macbook Air Cases", your domain name would be:

macbookaircases (dot) com

And your website name would be:

Macbook Air Cases

You can use WordPress blog and host it on Bluehost.

Task #4: Finding Ideas from Keywords

You have likely heard the term "keyword research". This is the act of finding keyword phrases that are relevant to your niche and deciding whether or not it is appropriate to build content around that particular keyword. This is going to be the “root” of all your search engine optimization success, so we are going to be tackling keywords here before we get into creating content.

A keyword is simply a word or phrase that people search for in the search engines. Every time you do a google search you are entering a "keyword" into the search box.

Ultimately, the goal of your keyword research is to find keywords that you can get rankings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing with, all while attracting a relevant audience. You will be using the keywords that you find in this lesson to build content around. This will lead you to search engine rankings and traffic to your website!

Each page you create will be targeting a keyword...

100 pages targeted 100 keywords = 100 potential Google rankings.

This can and will lead to mass amounts of traffic and those that follow along with this training are going to see their traffic continue to go up with every "keyword targeted" page or post that they create on their website.

Remember, Google and other search engines are around because of CONTENT and if you can deliver quality content (that targets low competition keywords), you will be able to get great rankings!

The simplest way to do it is through Alphabet Soup Technique - Using Google Instant to Find Keywords. Well, it’s a simple technique that you can use with a little help from Google.

Actually, we’ll be using the Google Instant feature that occurs automatically when searching for anything using the Google Search Bar.

Have you every noticed that when you place a subject or question in Google search, that Google automatically populates your search menu with similar or related searches that you’re looking for?

For example, I type in “lose body fat” into the Google’s search bar.

Google Instant will automatically populate my search with the top search results that are similar to my keyword or keyword phrase.

The way the Alphabet Soup Technique works is by..

1.) Take your blog post topic or keywords that you would like to investigate, and put it into the Google search bar.

2.) Then add the letters of the alphabet, one at a time, and see what is actively being searched for on Google.

You can also add a letter and go through the alphabet at the beginning of your keywords to see what Google Instant comes up with. Or you can use a question at the beginning of your keyword phrase starting with..

Who
How
What
When
or Where

Then you will see a whole new series of keyword phrases that you can potentially use as keywords for your next post on your website.

Task #5: Create Quality Content

Content is going to be the "meat" of your site. Content will be the difference between getting lots of traffic becoming an authoritative site, and you not seeing much in the way of results.

Plain and simple, content leads to rankings in search engines and rankings are going to lead to your website traffic and revenue! Google, BING, & Yahoo LOVE Content!

These are the top 3 search engines and make up over 98% of searches online. Want to know how you can leverage these search engines and get mad traffic to your site?

The answer is: Quality content.

The most important aspect of any content, whether it is text or video is that it is created with the reader in mind. Real people are reading this content so you want to deliver something that is relevant and interesting. When writing content you want to keep in mind that you are writing it for people, not just for Search Engines :)

Being original, candid, and building your personal brand is the best way to succeed within any niche, so please make sure you do put some effort into creating your own content. There is nothing wrong with getting some concepts or ideas from elsewhere to incorporate in your page as this will save you time. Refrain however, from copying and pasting other people's work as you will lose ANY chance of ranking if you have duplicate content on your site.

People are going to be navigating on our website, they are going to be reading our content, and they are going to be buying from us based on our recommendations. They are going to be engaging in discussions, they are going to be sharing our content on social networks, and they are going to be trusting us and our brand.

Don’t lose sight of this, I see it all the time where people get so lost in the process of what they are doing that they dehumanize their website to the point where no visitor would get any value. It is all about the EXPERIENCE you create.

Task #6: Find Affiliate Programs to Promote

Google – the easiest way to identify relevant affiliate programs, simply insert your keywords into the search engine and you may find products that suit your niche.
AdSense Ads – many of the AdSense ads appearing beside Google search results, someone's blog, and even on your own blog are likely to be products with affiliate programs attached. It is sometimes worth checking out the ads (don't click the ads on your own blogs, you will be penalized) to find out the potential affiliate partners. Very often, you will be surprised to find some great affiliate programs that you might not know.
Affiliate networks – there are quite a few affiliate networks around that list many affiliate programs. Most of these have search functions to allow you to type in keywords and find promotions relevant to your niche. Check outMarketLeverage, Clickbank, and Commission Junction.

TIPS: I agree it is not easy to stand out on the market as there are millions of bloggers out there. However, it is still possible for a newbie to make a sustainable income online by choosing the right niche. Remember to check out the Hot and Trending Niches for 2017 – Profitable Ideas for Affiliate Marketing

Alex

Founder of ManagingYourFinance.Com